


Lovefool

by beauxbatonsheart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (but she doesn't mean it), (even though no one knows it), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cross-Generation Relationship, F/M, Fleur Delacour bashing, Ginny Weasley Bashing, Homewrecker Victoire, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Smitten Harry, Veela Mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 23:10:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18456533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beauxbatonsheart/pseuds/beauxbatonsheart
Summary: Love hurt.Victoire knows that more than most.But even if it hurts her, she doesn't want it to hurt him. So, after two years of fighting to keep Harry Potter, she's determined that this is the Christmas she'll let him go.





	Lovefool

**Author's Note:**

> Everything I know about Harry Potter has been learned from reading fanfiction. Please to excuse all errors of judgment, strange acts of God and/or magic, and liberties taken.
> 
> This is my garbage "I want angsty, older Harry Potter and cross-gen" fic so proceed with that in mind. 
> 
> Fic title is from "Lovefool" by The Cardigans. I am terrible at titles so I chose the first one that popped in my head.
> 
> Trigger warnings: narcissistic parent (Fleur), scapegoating, child abuse.

Love hurt.

It was what made Victoire able to set her teeth as her husband moved on top of her, able to unclench her fingers and stroke through that wild mane tumbling over his shoulders and kiss his sweaty cheek without her lips trembling.

Usually, it was better. When he was at least putting on a good show for her, forcing a smile, acting like he was thinking of her and not someone else. When he wasn't three sheets to the wind on birthday wine and whatever Aunt Hermione had whispered into his ear five minutes before he moved across the room to her and bent her back and kissed her in a way that would be so lovely, lovely, lovely if he only meant it.

Tonight, it stung. Maybe she wasn't loose enough. Maybe she should have excused herself into the bathroom and done something more.

But she could bear it. Love hurt. If it wasn't this way, it would have been something else.

“So good,” he grunted.

“Love you,” she whispered. And it didn't sting, not really, when he hummed and lowered his fingers to where they were connected without saying it back.

Yes, love hurt.

She could remember the first time she realized that, when she’d glanced down at where her parents’ hands met underneath the groaning holiday table at the Burrow.

She was probably five, six at most, and unrealizing that she was in her last few moments of romantic naivete – wearing a glittery Sleeping Beauty jumper her beloved Uncle Ron had presented her with just an hour before (“Revisionist Disney nonsense,” Aunt Hermione had snorted, but her hands were gentle on Victoire’s shoulders as she tugged it on and smoothed it over her chest) and giggling as her grandfather cheekily bussed her grandmother’s cheek under the mistletoe.

To her, in her world of perfect couples and a shelf at home stacked up with glossy French fairy tale treasuries Grandmere pressed upon her – for sweet dreams, ma petite – love was lovely, lovely, lovely. Love was Uncle George loudly smooching the top of Aunt Angelina’s head and her pulling faces but not inching away, and Teddy’s parents smiling benevolently from their portrait as he loudly ripped open Victoire’s present to him and Teddy himself shyly pressing a kiss against her chin as everyone cooed and clapped.

(That didn’t quite feel right, afterward. It left Victoire’s skin itching in a not right, not right, not right, way, but Teddy was her teddy so she smiled and made sure he didn’t see her rubbing it off afterward.)

And it could have stayed that way. If she hadn’t looked down. If she’d been soggier after years of that syrupy sweet dream soaking into her very marrow. But she looked down, and she saw her father’s hand pressed over her mother’s. Holding it.

No, not just holding it.

 _Squeezing_ it, so tightly that in that moment she could hear the bones grinding and hear the slight inhalation that escaped her mother’s mouth before she stuffed the pain back between her lips like tissue, rearranged herself into poise and a convincing smile as Grammy leaned over to ask anxiously, “Are you alright, Fleur?”

“This one just kicking,” Fleur murmured demurely, and there was a great tittering and head nodding and smiling.

Daddy smiled too, and accepted the clap on his back from Uncle Ron next to him. Uncle Ron, who a moment ago – even though he loved Aunt Hermione, Victoire knew, in that lovely, lovely way – had been looking at Mommy with gooey, awed eyes as she bit down on a frosted cookie. Daddy had been watching Uncle Ron watch Mommy, and when Victoire looked up now, she could see the shadow of it in his eyes as he and Mommy glanced at each other.

Love hurt.

Victoire knew that, like a lightning bolt spearing through her right where she sat, ham and dinner rolls churning in her tummy and a cracker still clenched in one chubby fist. It didn’t matter that Mommy chose Daddy, even if he wasn’t her Chosen Mate. Daddy’s love would throb in his chest and make him wonder, always worry.

Daddy’s love would keep Mommy at arm’s length when she was right beside him, lifting her out of her chair and placing her next to other men – even his own brother, who meant nothing of it and would probably be whacked affectionately by his own wife for letting the veela allure and his mother’s homemade cordial addle his senses – and wondering if there would be someone she fit in next to like a missing puzzle piece.

Love hurt him.

And Victoire watched as he hurt Mommy, and Mommy lifted her chin and bore it, and realized, _Oh, this is the way the world is_.

And when it continued onward that day and afterward – when Uncle George and Aunt Angelina decided to open up their marriage (Aunt Hermione did not have fun being the unspoken delegate and explaining the concept of Uncle George and “Uncle” Lee to her wide eyed children, nieces and nephews), and when Mommy and Daddy quarreled over everything from the bills to how Victoire seemed to mess up everything she touched, and Uncle Charlie never seemed to be able to find anyone or anything to do except sulk in the corner of the room and moodily scratch whichever wound was scabbing over on his forearms – Victoire was alright with it.

She really was.

After all, fairy tales were fairy tales for a reason. True love wasn’t so picture perfect.

True love was watching Uncle Ron stagger around with bleary eyes and spit-flecked lips and Aunt Hermione sighing, pushing a hand through her curls and wearily shouldering him and leading him up to bed, even after she’d only just managed to get a tetchy, ill Hugo resting after hours of tears and complaints.

True love was her friend Scorpius’s parents and their museum-pristine marriage, their knowing just how to drape arms and clasp hands without touching any skin together at all, keeping everything immaculate and just so and distant so none of that dirtiness and complications could seep through like blood from a cut in otherwise porcelain-pale skin.

And her being ready for that – knowing that love, no matter how you tried, no matter how much a person mattered to you, would cut you like a knife when you least expected it – made her ready for Harry Potter to walk through the front door that first Christmas and leave her raw and trembling. 

She was still young, in that moment.

He was still Uncle Harry.

Aunt Ginny still rested her hand on his arm, eyes too bright, laugh too loud as he shuffled out from under her touch and sat on the other end of the table without meeting her concerned grandparents’ eyes, and Victoire pressed her palm over her chest and wondered why that stung.

She’d realize soon enough, when the ugly side of the veela reared its head from beneath the gold-painted verses about eternity and forever. She would know, once he went from Uncle Harry to Harry to oh God, _Harry_ , but that moment, she was able to breathe through it and even if she didn’t know in the way she was supposed to know, something in her settled into place.

Love hurt. She wasn’t the exception.

And that made it easier now, as he trembled in her arms and the familiar warmth spilled into her, and she kissed his eyebrow and told him it was so good, so good, you’re so good to me, to brace herself for when she would let go of him. Not just now, when the heat would dissipate and he would come back to himself and turn that distant gaze down to her face and see just who laid under him and pull back onto his side of the bed and tug the covers over his bare, golden skin. Not merely when he would turn on his side, and rather than reaching out to futilely tug at his shoulder like those first days - no, hours - of marriage when she was still hopeful, yearning, expecting something more than his back and a sigh.

_"Go to sleep, Victoire."_

Love hurt, so it wouldn't hurt any more or any less when she finally let go.

Dropped the rope.

After all, she was used to it. But he deserved more.

And it was a perfect time. The next day was Christmas.

* * *

"It was good of you to let him come," Grammy said as she rolled out a pie crust.

Victoire sat primly on her kitchen chair, aware of her mother's pursed lips. They hadn't spoken since she entered the house, but Fleur was better at these matters than Victoire was. And Victoire had sinned, she was sure she had. Either it was a long-standing crime (stealing her aunt's husband, shaming her mother with her sluttish ways and lack of purity, the way Fleur always knew she would and had tried to pinch and smack out of her for years) or something more recent, something Victoire wouldn't be able to remember once she cast her mind back.

The scolding would come. And Victoire would take it, because she knew it was her fault. There was something broken in her from when she was first born, her mother always assured her. It was whatever made her cast her eyes flirtatiously at her father (not that Victoire never meant it, but Fleur insisted that face was impure, nasty, rotten, and who would know her better?) and not have good enough grades when she sent her report card home from Beauxbatons (while Louis, angel he was, always pleased with barely sufficient grades and constant altercations with his roommates) and be kept at a distance no matter where she sat during family Christmas.

Conversations among the ones her age - Hugo, and Rose, and even dear, dear Teddy - would creak to an awkward lull when she tried to sit close, smiling tentatively and perched on the edge of the couch. They would eye her wedding ring, her scarlet letter  _A,_ and shuffle closer and close ranks and lean their knees together, and she would know for sure: she didn't belong here, in this world where you reached for your relationships within the circles of people you didn't know, people who hadn't possibly changed your diapers. She didn't belong in the ranks of those who somehow didn't carry the dark flaw in their hearts Fleur told her she bore.

But even if she sat here, in the kitchen, where Grammy insisted with a tight smile she didn't need to touch (sully) the plates or silverware, it wasn't any better. Aunt Hermione tried hard, her hand over Victoire's, shaking it occasionally as a bawdy joke was attempted and died in the air (because Victoire wasn't quite old enough to hear it, but also married enough to join in) or Fleur made a pointed remark about someone else's achievement - how well James did at existing, or how beautiful Lily looked tonight.

Victoire was wearing black. Her husband had given her a confused look, but said nothing and extended his elbow without a word. As he always did.

Things were so normal. It was making it easier.

Because pain was normal. Remarks like this from Grammy, looks like this from her mother, were normal.

And as soon as this was over, it would be better for all of them.

"I didn't keep him away," Victoire murmured, not because she entirely wanted to defend herself, but because Aunt Hermione was gripping her hand and Fleur was watching and it was obviously her expected remark in the scene.

Grammy clucked and Fleur said bitterly, "You obviously don't encourage him enough. I don't know what I did to deserve a daughter who is so reluctant to spend time with her family."

"It's not like that, Maman."

"It never is. Who begged you to come tonight, Hermione? Or was it George? Because God knows the floo is always barred to me."

She never called, except in the middle of the night when her husband was away on a mission. Victoire pretended to sleep, turned her back but it was all the easier for her mother's hissed recriminations -  _so dirty, so pathetic, spreading your legs for him, you have no shame, you dishonored me in front of my in-laws_ \- to slide like daggers into her exposed flesh. 

"I'm sorry," Victoire said quietly. And she was. But she would make it better.

Only a few hours more. And if the news was right, that Teddy had owled her this morning in his frantic, drunken spider scrawl - thinking he was warning her of inevitable disaster, poor dear, when he had only confirmed that this night, Christmas, was the right night to bring it all full circle...

And then, Fleur uttered the words that made her heart beat faster.

"And with Ginny coming tonight, too..."

Grammy looked at her sharply, and shook her head. Aunt Hermione gripped her hand tighter. Victoire lowered her head, biting her lip, the way her mother expected her to.

_The news was true._

_It was time._

And yes, it still smarted, in her chest, but that was normal.

Love hurt.

Letting love go would hurt just as much. Of course it would.

"She said maybe," Hermione said weakly. "And she's seeing the other Creevey right now, isn't she?"

"That was over months ago," Angelina said from the other side of the table. She'd been otherwise quiet, eyes narrowed at Victoire in a way that Victoire could never read, as she stroked her rounded belly. No one was sure it was George's, but no one wanted to ask either, and in her role as distant and despised, Victoire knew better than to be the one who broached the topic. Besides, even if their love was complicated, Angelina and George's love oddly seemed not to hurt or disappoint either of them. So who was Victoire to question those who seemed blessed enough to avoid the situation she found herself in daily?

Hermione widened her eyes at her sister-in-law, and Angelina shrugged unrepentedly. "It's true. I think it might be Viktor right now. Might."

"I hope you'll be able to let her say hello without making a fool of yourself," Grammy said over her shoulder to Victoire. "Let's all let bygones be bygones now, alright? And you weren't in the right to begin with, my girl."

"I know."

She did. If she could go back, if she could cut the veela side of her heart out of her chest so that the first time she saw her Uncle Harry, there was nothing buried deep in the flesh to betray her or lead her, several years later, in a moment of moonlit foolishness, to his side and breathlessly whisper, "I have something to tell you," she would do it.

Without hesitation.

"He misses her," Fleur said, watching her face carefully. "I can see it in his eyes. Tonight will be good for them."

Victoire laced her hands together. The room felt so close, the air thick with pie spices and roasting chicken, and she felt nauseous. It was almost over. It was nearly done.

"I know."

The bell rang, and the sound of it resonated through her ears. She jumped, and Aunt Hermione turned wide eyes on her, even as Grammy's eyes lit up and Fleur straightened in her own chair.

"Is she early?"

As everyone scrambled for the door, as Victoire could hear - in the other room, even, she was so pathetic when it came to him - his footsteps move away from where he'd been leaning in easy conversation over Teddy, her stomach lurched and for a moment, she couldn't go through with it.

If love hurt, if this was the way it was supposed to be, why was she the villain?

If everyone else could take what they wanted, even as it clawed or bit or sliced their greedy hands and hearts to ribbons, why couldn't she?

But then she heard the door slide open, her grandfather say with such a painfully sweet relief, "Here's my girl," and Aunt Ginny's watery, "Oh, Daddy," and she was able to pull herself to her full height and clench her hands at her side and walk out in the other room.

Even though she'd promised herself earlier, in the bathroom as she pinched blood into her cheeks and smeared plum lip gloss from a tin onto her lips and stared at her washed-out complexion and dead eyes, she wouldn't look at him - she wouldn't hurt herself  _that_ completely - her eyes immediately went to him.

And his eyes were on Aunt Ginny.

And his face was soft, his lips parted.

And she saw how Aunt Ginny looked for him first, how her hands reached out and how his readily met hers and clasped together.

"Ginny," he said.

"Harry," she said.

And she cleared her throat, and she saw the way her mother's eyes narrowed and how her husband's eyes widened and he dropped Ginny's hands as though he was burnt, and how Ginny's breath caught when she caught sight of her - niece, enemy, homewrecker - and she said tightly, "Hello, Victoire," and the rest of the family gathered close around her and stared her down as if saying

_How can you do this now?_

_How can you do this to them again?_

_How evil can you be?_

"Now that everyone's here," Victoire said, and she was proud of herself that her voice did not shake, "there's an announcement I need to make. About Harry. And me."

"No," breathed Uncle Ron. "Vicky, girl, no."

Fleur shrieked and rushed forward, but Victoire's father - solid and stolid in an armchair - reared up and caught her arm.

"Let me go," Victoire could hear her hiss. "Let me go before that...that hussy drags us through the mud again. Hasn't she done enough?"

And her husband, Victoire's one and only love, as painful as it was and always would be, just stared at her with his eyes wide behind his glasses. She kept her gaze on him, even as it smarted.

She was doing this for him.

Love would hurt her.

But he deserved better.

He deserved the fairy tale.

"I, Victoire Weasley-Potter," Victoire said as clearly as she could manage, "release Harry Potter from the responsibilities of being a veela mate. I sever the bond, and end our marriage."

"What..." Aunt Hermione breathed. She staggered toward Victoire. "You can't do that. Victoire..."

"Victoire," Teddy repeated in his strong baritone, shaking his head. "For God's sake."

But Victoire could only see the triumph glistening in Ginny's damp eyes.

"Yes," she breathed. "Finally."

"Yes," Victoire said. "Finally. Now. That's...that's the announcement. And Merry Christmas. I hope the family enjoys themselves, and I'm sorry for...for interrupting. And throwing things so far off course." 

She tried to smile and hoped it was successful. She could feel her lips trembling. And he hadn't said anything, just stared with his mouth open.

In shock, probably. Amazed at his sudden, relieving freedom.

Wondering why she'd loosened the shackles suddenly, here, now.

She'd wronged him for so long. But now, she felt lighter. She had done the right thing. 

"I sever the bond," she said again, because she could. And then she was rushing for her coat and her mother broke free from her father and, snarling, scraped her nails and her open palm across her face.

"You little attention-seeking wretch!" She screamed. "Get out! Get out!"

And she bundled Victoire, still with her coat over her arm, toward the door and out into the snow, and Victoire allowed herself to be tossed out - how pleasant that must have been for her mother, to do what she had instinctively wanted to do since she looked down at Victoire and saw the wrongness written all over her face.

It didn't matter that the gravel ripped her hands as she crouched on her hands and knees, that beyond her she could still hear her parents yelling at each other and her grandmother weeping and confused exclamations from other family members spilling down the staircase and into the frozen tableu, bringing it all back to life with their questions.

In a moment, she would need to draw herself up and apparate to her new apartment. In a moment, she would need to close the door on this existence - this life, the ways in which she'd hurt and disappointed all the people inside.

But for now, she let the snow lay stinging kisses on her face and cheeks, and let the image of those green eyes wide with confusion and surprise burn behind her eyelids.

Love hurt.

She knew that.

But she could bear it. After all, what other ending could she expect for her ending?

It would never be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this wasn't too painful an experience. Onward to the next chapter, I hope.


End file.
